


The Origin of Lies

by Evenstar24



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evenstar24/pseuds/Evenstar24
Summary: Hermione hope it matters how it ends.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Hermione stumbled on a tree root, cursing at the earth and runs toward the Shrieking shack, and god knows there was no _time_.  
She has so much to do, and so little time to do it and we're in the middle of a war and all I can think is, 'just one last time'.  
I feel guilty in my betrayal to the bottom of my bones, aching with how cruel it might turn out to be, what are the consequences.  
Consequences that can't seem to matter, don't matter, will matter, I wonder briefly how history will remember us- me, ron, harry.  
Will I be considered a traitor? 

I prod the tree root we shouldn't have been chasing when we were kids and tumble in, anxious, so damn anxious, and wet all at once, embarassingly, the way you'd been standing in a normal street and suddenly you can feel your panties are soaked, and the incredible anxiety of wondering if this will be the time he doesn't come-  
but I needn't worry, his hands are on my neck and lips are on my throat and he smells like too many cleaning charms uttered in the dark and something thats entirely himself, warm skin and musk and sex.  
-

she tumbles through the door like a tumbleweed, wearing clothes that are filthy, hair wild with a life of its own and for a moment- a flash of memory- her hair twining around my wand after a fast fuck, determined and with a life of its own. Just like her. Before she can speak my lips are on hers, and shes warm and a little musty, body firm, someone attuned and ready for a fight, even if at first glance you don't think it.  
She groans into my mouth and presses up against me and suddenly I'm harder than stone, despite the pressure, the incredible daily pressure that lives on my spine, pushing me down and down and down, the fear of dying in this war, and yet I'm here, here again ready to touch the brightest witch of our age and although I've never said so, never talked about it, i'm on the wrong side and I know it and every time I fuck her its like a taste of hard bought redemption I can never have, because I can never abandon my family, ever.

I'm a malfoy, we just don't. Every time I come back I don't tell my father, and he doesn't ask, but he looks at me, speculatively, wondering. But he never asks.

I kiss her hard, pushing her back towards the couch until the backs of her knees press against it and she buckles, suddenly 'Malfoy' she says and I put a hand on her mouth and 'shhh' and I bend down towards my own oblivion.

-

He pushes me back into the couch, shushing me, pushing the troubles away but the fights about to begin and he needs to know, we need to say goodbye- we never speak here but this might be the very last time and I want to say so many things, tell him to call for me when its over, know already that I'll lie about him being on our side, know already I'll stand before the wizengamot and beg for his life. I'm thinking that I hope that everything else I've done will save us, that it might count, against the traitorous truth- i love draco. I don't know when it happened but I do, and then the thought is gone and his hand is on my cunt and his tongue is on my clit and I can't breathe as he circles his tongue, slowly, and who ever would have imagined the pureblood on his knees eating out the mudblood, the indelible scarred evidence on my arm. Real and true as fire and ink.

\--

Looking at her, shivering and filthy and fighting a war, shaking with awareness, something that I didn't even know was there gives out, and I'm not sure if I want to fuck her or kill her as she shakes, gently, with arousal.  
"Stop me. Tell me to stop, Granger. Tell me to stop or I'm going to fuck you right here on this couch in this godforsaken place'. As if I haven't done it before, once, twice, a dozen times.  
She says nothing and I realize, as I feel her against me and and her hot breath on my neck that here, I'm not the malfoy I thought I was, and that after this i never will be.  
I don't even know who i am anymore, but I don't think she does, either. She looks at me with all the fierce determination I always hated her for and says 'what are you waiting for' and she tastes like hot oblivion and the aftertaste of firewhiskey and forest leaves.  
I turn her over, gentled, and stroke the bottom of her back, right hand cradling her cunt, as I pull her up and one handed, unbuckle myself until i'm in my own hand and waiting for nothing I push inside her, feeling the resistance, because she's not quite ready, she hasn't come.

'Give it up, granger'.

No.

I'll fuck her till she does. I'll fuck her till we both come, sated and warm and safe.

\---

He pushes into me, and I can feel the resistance, and I wasn't quite ready but he rubs my clit, demanding, demanding, demanding his way in and he pushes and suddenly I'm full, fuller than words or memory and nothing else exists but the warm heat behind me and the vulnerability of not having to lead and I don't tell anyone ever not till i'm dead but the truth is I'd love not to have to be the one who tells everyone what to do and he doesn't need it he just knows, knows knows and for once I don't have to know and its like being able to breathe and being held, all at once and he holds me, pushing me against him and its like running up a hill as a child, wind in your hair, knowing you just need to get to the top. its like being free and for once in my life i'm not weighing the consequences, and not trying to save anyone but me.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm saving myself. But I only think that way when he's hilt deep inside me and there's nowhere else to be but here- in reality I know they'd disavow us, like snape. The end of this war will see the wizarding world sharply split. We both know there's no hope otherwise but sometimes I imagining fucking every day like normal people, having a garden and maybe a light haired child. But then he shoves me harder into the couch and he makes me groan, the hilltop is so close and its building inside me like rain coming on a hot day.

-

I can feel her getting close, and so am I, when her cunt starts to squeeze around me and suddenly, I'm so close and my arm sears with all the pleasure of the call of the dark lord. No one knows this but its not pain, we feel, its every nerve ending on fire- why would he bother making people do what they don't want to do? Thats how he gets us all and I'm coming, unable to hold it or stop myself, and she moans, thickly, as if through a blanket and I have to pull out, have to go- and I'm standing, struggling to buckle my pants.

-Granger- 

'I know. I came to tell you. Its about to start. I might never-

And i know what she wants to say, whats hovering just between those lips of hers, those infuriating brilliant lips and then.

'I have to go.'  
And I wonder if I'm about to die.

\----------------

I sit, for a moment, watching him disappear, and my hand burns with a message 'Hermione, where are you?'.  
It's Harry. He's in the castle, and sheer horror fills me. He has the map.

Draco never, ever calls me by my name. I wonder if he ever will. I pull myself up with sheer force of will and walk towards what might be my death.   
And just for a moment, I hold in my mind what it felt like to be calm and still, just letting go.

Free.


	2. What would you give, really?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end is the beginning.

AN: In honor of my bestie Lily's prompt that I utterly failed to fulfil, I have at least nodded at it in passing in the hallway.  
Songs for the chapter: Yuna, Lullabies. Sia, Breathe Me. Bad Guy, Patrick Reza Remix.

“Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.”  
― Michael Cunningham, [The Hours](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2245431)

It was the recipe for a perfect disaster. Hermione wondered, later if they had treated their lives like a storybook, one children could pick up and put down at will and then all would end happily ever after. She wondered if she’d done any one thing differently if she could have changed the outcome. That if in an imaginary version of this world, things might have been different. As it was, she ran for the castle, tucking her jumper down and tying her flyaway hair back up, and tucking her wand in, out of sight. She tumbled into the great hall, heading for the fireplace, not realizing the time. Severus Snape stood in front of the students, warning them of the penalty for helping Harry, but he still calls him Potter. I don’t think he can even help himself. I can’t help but look at him and think I’ve never seen a man so tired in my whole life. But I can’t afford to pity the man, because McGonagall certainly doesn’t. My old mentor steps out into the fray and starts attacking Severus in earnest, and I can’t help but hope Draco’s already out. Snape turns to flee, but as he turns to run he catches my eye, and gives me a hard stare. And then he’s gone, a wisp of smoke outside the castle windows.  
Ron grabs my hand and I startle guiltily- he wants to go down and destroy the cup with Nagini’s fangs. We go downstairs, cup in hand- Harry’s gone to talk to Rowena Ravenclaw and Mcgonagall is calling the castle to battle. The very gargoyles on the battlements are coming to life, and god I hope its enough. I hope I can get Draco out of the way. All of this rests on a prayer. I take Rons warm and sweaty hand and we run down, down, down.

\------

I wonder if I smell. I don’t think you’re sposed to smell like a fuck at the end of the world. My father keeps eyeing me, standing in the forest in front of Voldemort. I’m a man and I’ve been around him often and yet in a temper he still makes something hot in my guts roil. I think its because he isn’t natural, there’s nothing natural about him. You can feel magic, you know, and his just feels like… emptiness with the smell of dirty skin. I can’t even explain it. From my earliest memories magic always smelled good, even Nanny’s, and Dobbys. Like lemon biscuits and tea on a cold day. Lord Voldemort points his wand at his throat, telling Potter to come to him or he’ll kill everyone. The sound resounds throughout the forest, and vibrates into your chest, like a sick sonic boom. I catch my mothers gaze and the only thing I can see reflected back is abject fear. My father looks lost. He never intended to be here. And he loves Severus. More than my mother will ever know. I wouldn’t know either, except the summer before I’d stayed at school over the holidays, wanting, more than ever before to run home, but I had been assigned to kill Dumbledore. 17 years old and my soul was already lost. I was looking for oblivion when I found granger, but right before that, snape and my father were in the dungeons, my father’s hand on his neck, and I saw it. I know that my father loves my mother, but its in the way of loyalty, the way you love a best friend. I think what he feels for Severus is more like trapped adoration. Maybe the way I feel about Granger. Maybe the way I want to make her want me. The way I want her to save me. Maybe he wants Severus to save his life. I look down at the forest floor, waiting. The first wave of attack begins, Voldemort aiming his wand at the castle, digging away at the shield. I hope mcgonagall has the children out of the way of the wolves. I hope to god Granger doesn’t die.

\--------  
Ron kisses me, and I want to like it, want to want to marry him. Want to want this life. But all I can think of is Draco Malfoys hard kisses- he kisses like he wants to prove something, the same way I wanted to prove I was as good as they were when I got to Hogwarts. He kisses like he’d die if he didn’t and Ron’s warm, spongy boyishness is totally different. It's wrong. Ron knows I’m not feeling it and his eyes widen. I take his hand and turn and run. I can’t do this now. Ron is a good man. He takes my hand and runs with me and I regret this moment for the rest of my life. I wish I’d told him I love him. We race up the stairs, heading for Harry, and the room of requirement. I don’t know it yet but I’m about to see Malfoy for the last time, like this.  
And instead of anything else I’m saving his life.

\-------  
Greg, fucking dickhead that he is casts fiendfyre. He never should have learned and for a minute I pity them both, lives full of boyish mistakes. They’ve both cast the cruciatus curse on men, killed, watched people beg for death and yet they aren’t men. In the moments it takes them to realize they’ve made a mistake Potter and I are already climbing the stacks. I catch his eye and for a moment, all I can do is look at him with all the regret in the world, and I wish we’d stuck together, that first day at Hogwards. I wish I’d been kinder. I wish I hadn’t been determined to be special. I wish so many things and in the second of hesitation potters kept climbing and we’re trying to keep up. Greg falls into the fyre and I almost cry out, when Granger and Weasley burst through the doors. Her hair is a hectic fray of energy around her head, concentrating determination on her face as she steers that damned broom and I know she’s terrified, she has that focused look like she gets when she’s about to hit you. She and potter fall into formation and he reaches for my hand, and misses. She doesn’t. I land behind her on the broom and kiss the back of her neck and she tenses, but nobody’s seen.The fyre chases us from the room, and it looks like The Dark Lord’s face, screaming.  
We land outside the door, tumbling from the broom. I can’t help it. ‘What the fuck was that?’. She looks at me, a long look, memorizing my face, I think. And then she takes harry and ron and she runs, leaving me behind.

\------------

Harry is watching Snape die, tears falling from his eyes. I siphon the tears into a vial, and we run for the pensieve. Falling inside it feels like a sick feeling, just like Snapes death. Malfoys father will be devastated. I shouldn’t know, but I do. Malfoy told me that night, sitting in the classroom, where I’d been trying to force my magic to make a perfect copy that felt like it had a soul, and we fucked for the first time. He’d just seen his father kissing snape’s neck, and he burst into the damned room like a damned stormcloud, smashing my china bowl. The magic swirled around his head, and he shook it, hard, like a wet dog, breathing like he’d run a mile.  
What are you doing in here, Hermione? And I’d never heard him say my name before and I don’t know why but I sat on the floor and I told him. We’d come to the castle and no one knew, but he did. Later, Bellatrix Lestrange cut my arm and infected it, and later still he kissed it better in the shack and I was lost, even to myself. He had pretended not to know who harry was and I didn’t ask him what the consequence was, I just touched him like we’d die for it. We still might.  
I don’t tell Harry what we saw isn’t real. But I do wonder if snape will kill us all, from wherever he is now. I wonder if there’s anything I can do. But Harry will go to the forest to die and I know it and he knows it and I want to tell him he’s the bravest man I’ve ever known but instead I run for Neville, sword in hand. Ron hasn’t realized, what it means, so I just get us out of the way. Everyone should have the chance to choose the manner of their own death and I fucking hope Harry really is a horcrux or snape has doomed us all.

\------------

Lord Voldemort waits, patiently for him, stinking up the forest with his sick magic like a dog with an infection. Waiting to see if Potter comes. He walks out of the trees, seemingly unafraid, hands high. I want to cry out. I want to scream. Why the fuck granger didn’t stop this, I don’t know but in this very moment I could strangle her with my belt I’m so angry. Voldemort gloats and the fear freezes my father's face. He holds up Snape's wand and my father buckles, falling to his knees. Voldemort spits on the ground, and then casts. Avada Kedavra! And Potter falls. I’ve never been so afraid in my whole life. My mother is trying to reach my father when Voldemort says, silk in his voice…’Narcissa. Make sure.’ and my mother stumbles forward, still beautiful, so broken, and bends to touch Potter’s neck. She counts the beat of my heart. He’s dead, she says, voice quiet, leaden. Hagrid stumbles forward, and picks up Harry, gentle and softly. And we all walk out of the forest to tell the wizarding world that its all over. I want to be dead, except I want to see her one last time. Maybe I can save her. Maybe.

\------------------------

Harry Potter is dead!  
Harry Potter is dead!  
The magnified voice echoes across the grounds of the castle and we stumble towards the sound and the look on Minerva’s face would break your heart. But I’m really wondering if it's true. I can’t lose Harry. I can’t. Voldemort gloats, and I’m looking for Neville- Neville has to have played his part, and I can’t see him, and I realize just how much this effort relies on hope. We don’t kill after all. Or maim. Or use the Dark Arts. Draco does. We’ve never talked about it but his magic smells. When he gets close enough it smells different- it would, anyway, but to me it smells a bit like an underlayer of wet ink on his magic. It smells stronger every time I see him. I wonder what we’ll both smell like by the end of this war. If we even make it beyond today. I finally sight him, a few to the left of McNair. Inside, I can suddenly breathe. He’s standing with his mother and father and then Hagrid steps forward, Harry in his arms.  
But it's Narcissa who catches my eye. ‘I know’ she mouths, and then looks at Harry, shaking her head. I hear a sharp cry behind me and turn my head, and Luna is weeping, she’s got Neville in her arms, a sharp fang embedded in his chest.

\-------  
Then it all goes to total shit, of course, because Potter falls from Hagrid’s arms and casts Stupefy at The Dark Lord. In approximately 30 seconds I’m totally convinced we’re all about to fucking die. Potter really has no dueling style at all, its just the absolute brute force of his magic punching through, like lightning in the air. Its mesmerising to watch. But then Voldemort stuns him backwards, blunting his head into a column, and in the moment of distraction, flicks his wand at my mother, casually, elegantly brutal, and she crumples to the ground. I don’t even hear the spell that kills her. Because I know, instantly, that she’s dead.  
My father lifts her into his arms, looking, for the first time in a long time, like himself, and siezes my arm. When we land in the Manor Foyer, he stalks outside into her rose garden, my mother in his arms, and howls. The dusk gathers around him and all I can hear is my blood in my ears, and my own shame beating in time with my heart. I remain, still, stiff and angry, watching my father stand in the gathering darkness, looking for Hermione, only seeing my father, a tall and lonely figure, unnaturally still in the dying light. He turns and I can see my mothers blood on his robes. I walk toward him, slowly, knelt in the green of her blooming garden, reach out and feel the silk of his shoulder beneath my hand.

\------  
I think I’m going to die with the pain of it. Narcissa is small in my arms, weightless, and all I can feel is my own neglect. Its like everything that made her her, is gone. Her hands are cold.  
Her hands are never cold.  
I can hear my son behind me, and feel his hand on my shoulder.  
Before I’ve even thought, made a decision, I’m on my feet. I hit him hard enough to bring him to his knees, then again. He doesn’t stop me, doesn’t even resist, just takes the punches one by one and finally I notice my son isn’t a boy anymore, and suddenly, I feel the grief well up and my son wraps his arms around me, taller, now, than I am. And here we stand, a tableaux of the lost and the broken until we’re standing, alone, in the dark. I look up at my tall, beautiful son and see his mother.  
‘Draco. We have to go and find Severus.’ For once, he doesn’t question me. Doesn’t say he’s dead. Just picks up his mother and carries her in, to Topsy.  
It occurs to me for the first time I’m looking at a man.  
For just a second, I want my boy back.  
The shame runs through my hands like liquid silver.


	3. Chapter 2, If you think its true, you aren't really looking.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations at the end of the world.

You can’t apparate into Hogwarts grounds, and I feel how wrong it is that I can down to my toes. Its the second time, today. We land quietly near the lake, and my father tries to cast his Patronus.   
Expecto Patronum, he says, quiet, and nothing comes. He tries again, and again, and again.  
‘Father, do you remember, when I was little, when mother and Topsy used to make jam biscuits? And she’d pick the roses from the trees and make rose jam? Think of the sun on your face, and sitting in your parlor, waiting to eat them with us, with Severus coming later. His eyes are closed and I can almost see the memory in his mind. A thestral bursts from the end of his wand, huge and silver. His eyes, the same color as the beast, the same as mine, widen, and the patronus puffs into smoke.

I conjure mine, and send it into the forest- ‘Find severus.’. I look at my father, the man I most respected in the world and see his hands shake, with regret, and pain, and all the things in a day that you might lose. I know Granger’s alright, I can feel a little bit of her magic in the pendant hidden under my shirt. Its a problem I’ll have to deal with soon, though, especially if Potter lost. I’m surprised The Dark Lord hasn’t called us already, but my father scratches his arm and I realize, suddenly, that he already has and Lucius is ignoring it.   
On another day, another time, I’d change the situation but right now there’s nothing I can do.  
We tread through the forest towards the whisps of my patronus, a wolf, a form I never thought suited me much. But the silver is bright in the gloom, and I follow it through the trees, until we find Severus’s still form. My father bends, down on his knees in the dirt for the second time in a day, and then disapparates, sudden and quick as a crack in the air and all the remains is Snape’s blood in the dirt. 

I take the moment alone to pull my pendant from my shirt and tap it three times, hoping she gets the message. And that if she does, that she comes. She’s never been into the manor by invitation.. I wonder if she’ll come now. It would be an act of bravery on her part, since The Dark Lord’s tenure it stinks like dark magic and dirty snake. Nothing has been able to get the smell out. Aunt Bella crucio’ed her here and later I licked the poison out of her arm and desperation throbs through my bones, sudden and fearful, like a childhood monster.  
But all the monsters I’ve ever known are human.

\-------

I’ve dumped Severus onto Narcissa’s chaise longue, completely unwilling to move and am casting, frantically, when a loud pop sounds in the foyer, and I’m startled- the wards wouldn’t allow The Dark Lord himself into the manor right now. Its Miss Granger, standing next to my son. She says nothing but she touches his arm and in that instant, I know. I knew it was someone but I didn’t think it would be her. The fear in my chest wants me to insult her, instill fear, push. But I tamp it down and say ‘Welcome to the Manor, Miss Granger. Your last visit to us was… regrettable. I’m sorry for it. At present, no one without express permission can enter the wards, and clearly my son has given it to you. Why are you here? I’ve lost my wife today, and I’d prefer not to lose my.. Severus, too.

She reaches into a beaded bag in her arms until its gone to the elbow, and pulls from it a healing kit… one inscribed with Severus’s spiky, angry scrawl. She steps forward, and begins to cast. Really the force of her magic is surprising. It feels nothing like mine or Draco’s, its softer, more subtle but powerful as a whip. The symbols above Severus’s head seem to mean something to her, and she opens Severus’s mouth and pours several potions down his throat, messaging to make them go down. She casts something, non verbal, and the air smells suddenly like lemon verbena. She gives him something that smells like peppermint, and then sits on the floor, legs disreputably crossed. I don’t think I ever saw Narcissa sit like that, not in 40 years of marriage. She busies herself for a moment with the contents of her bag, and it makes me realize she’s anxious and tamping it down hard.

‘Is Potter dead?’ my son says.  
She pauses a moment before answering, and says ‘I don’t know if I can tell you.’ How very Gryffindor of her. Means he isn’t. ‘I’ll wait for Severus to wake up’. 

The fear crushing my chest reduces. ‘So he will wake up then?’  
Her eyes are large, vulnerable, as she says ‘well he should. If he doesn’t he doesn’t want to be here’ and in her eyes is pity. She must know. Draco must have told her.  
‘I’m sorry about your wife, Mr Malfoy.’ And its hard, so hard, not to snap at her.

\------------  
She’s sitting there on the floor next to Severus, trying to look relaxed in the house where Aunt Bella crucio’ed her to save my father’s lover. Its almost too weird to think but it occurs to me how very brave she is, and how very little time we have, and how very much I want to kiss her neck. Severus wakes up coughing, spewing green bile onto the marble floor and before he can fall off the couch my father’s arms are around him and he’s almost crooning, Severus, Severus, Severus and Hermione gets to her feet and takes my hand and we walk into the hallway, waiting. It feels like something we shouldn’t watch, and I’m about to comment when she slams me into the hallway wall and kisses me, hard, and it makes me groan, despite all the fear and the anxiety something blooms in my chest.  
It feels like hope might, and for a second I can see a future with her, eyes closed full of curly haired blonde children. The pain is visceral, but I just stand there and hold her like it might be the last time.

‘He isn’t dead is he?’

She shakes her head and my father leans out of the foyer and says ‘Draco, Miss Granger, we need to talk. Please come in’.  
It's a conversation for the end of the world.


End file.
